In 2023, the Texas Legislature unanimously passed a law raising auto insurance costs for Texans by $1 to combat rampant catalytic converter theft.

Three years later, a little-known state agency has devoted at least $30 million of that fee toward supercharging the state’s Flock surveillance network, placing cameras along highways and streets from El Paso to the Louisiana border, an analysis by The Texas Tribune found.

The Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority, led by a board mostly appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott, has turned the $1 fee hike into at least 3,200 Flock cameras.

The agency has awarded no fewer than 95 grants to help law enforcement agencies purchase and maintain about 2,000 Flock cameras. Another $15.9 million is helping the Texas Department of Public Safety add almost 1,200 more.

The effort is far from over. In early August, the agency approved another $3 million to help DPS install 583 more cameras along Texas tollways over the next year.

Miguel Rodriguez, chair of the Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority, said during an August 2023 meeting that he hoped to use proceeds from the fee increase to “cover the entire state” with cameras.

Rodriguez, who is also the Laredo Police Chief, sees the cameras as a powerful law enforcement tool, particularly to combat criminal organizations.

“That kind of capability directly disrupts the operational advantage these transnational criminal organizations rely on, and it strengthens our ability to protect both Texas communitiesand the broader region,” he said in an email.

But on Friday evening, after multiple requests for comment from the Tribune about its findings, Abbott’s office said the governor was pausing all state funding for local grants to be used for Flock cameras.

“To the extent that cities get any funding for those cameras, most of it comes from the federal government. To the extent any funding comes from Texas agencies, those agencies are clarifying that those funds cannot be used for Flock cameras,” Abbott spokesperson Andrew Mahaleris said in a statement shared first with the Tribune.

The $1 per year fee increase has raised an estimated $81 million, allowing the authority to funnel $50.8 million into 234 grants that have helped reimburse police departments for officers, crime analysts and attorneys to prosecute vehicular crimes, as well as drones and other surveillance devices.

The Tribune found agency grants to police departments ranged from $7,000 for two Flock cameras in Bellmead, near Waco, to almost $1.7 million for 201 cameras in Dallas. Some city networks — like the 165 cameras in Laredo and 150 in El Paso — were entirely subsidized by the grants.